<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The trouble with Gifts: Christmas Edition by DearDiary</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28294938">The trouble with Gifts: Christmas Edition</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DearDiary/pseuds/DearDiary'>DearDiary</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Trouble With Gifts [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Christmas, F/M, Fluff, Gift Exchange, Romance, Rose in a woollen jumper, Sonic Screwdriver, fairy godmother - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:35:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,513</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28294938</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DearDiary/pseuds/DearDiary</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>If there is one thing that Rose hates to do among any others - it's choosing gifts for her male friends and relatives (and boyfriends). But this is the challenge of the year - what do you give the last of the Time Lords whom you secretly fancy?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Trouble With Gifts [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2160234</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The trouble with Gifts: Christmas Edition</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/loupettes/gifts">loupettes</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This one was written in a spur of the moment, and wouldn't happen if it wasn't for lovely loupettes on Tumblr.<br/>Merry Christmas to all who celebrates Christmas. Here's some NineRose fluff for you. Enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Rose hated choosing gifts. No, scratch that, she hated choosing gifts for men. Not that there were a lot of men whom she needed to buy gifts for; yet the quantity was enough to make her grind her teeth in silent frustration. Jackie helped when it came to male relatives. Rose would usually give her mother some money and Jackie would take care of presents for uncles and twice-removed cousins. Mickey was easy to please, but you could only give your boyfriend a voucher to a computer club, a game he was wishing for some time and was telling her ears off all their time together, or a T-shirt with some cool writing. It was nice, Mickey was complacent, but it became old after some time. He never wore ties, and giving him wristwatch would mean for them to have a huge fight and an ugly break up (it was a bad omen, go figure; and Mickey was raised by his grandmother, Rita-Anne, who was a firm believer in bad luck and black cats and spilt salt, so it was only natural that he believed in these things, too). Rose knew from the private conversations with Shareen and Keisha that they sometimes got their boys special underwear, and, while Rose was giggling at the girls’ ideas of colours and patterns of the male pants, she swore to never-ever do a thing like that. Socks...no. Kind of pathetic.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose also knew that was a normal practice for the girlfriends and the wives on the Estates to give their second halves a striptease or even a pair of handcuffs to spend the night with, but that didn’t seem right, too. It was Christmas, and not Valentine’s day (never mind that she had to treat Mickey to striptease last February 14), and it wasn’t very Christmas-like to parade around Mickey’s flat half-naked.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>She could put a bow on herself and tell him she was a present?</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Desperate times call for desperate measures.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose sighed, annoyed at her lack of fantasy and wandering thoughts. She wasn’t supposed to think of what to give Mickey.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Oh, no, her mission was much more important. Impossible. Almost dangerous.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>She needed to choose a gift for the last of the Time Lords. The Oncoming Storm. The “I’m impressive and you know it” bloke. </span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>She needed to choose a perfect gift for a man that presented her the Universe and the endless adventures and wonders that came with it, and had asked nothing in return.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose groaned and flopped on her back on the bed, dislodging her pen and notebook in the process. The list was lame, to say the least. She was out of ideas before she even had any. She tried to ask the Doctor surreptitiously about what he wanted for Christmas, but he found out her awkward intentions very soon, and told her not to worry her pretty blonde head about silly things like that. The cheekiness of him! He swore to take her to Jackie’s to celebrate but warned her firmly that he would not take part in the stupid domestics. After she pursed her lips in mild irritation and her face fell a little (Rose tried her best not to let the emotions show), the Doctor added in much softer voice that he’d only shadow their festivities with his “sunny” disposition and that the beautiful Tardis was due for some maintenance, too. So, she’d be free to spend time with her mom and other characters from the Tyler family while he’d be enjoying himself tinkering with the Tardis.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose rubbed her eyes tiredly. She had to think of something. If only she had a fairy Godmother...</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>As if on cue, a book appeared out of thin air on Rose’s pink bedspread. She turned her head to the right, curious. Then a happy smile appeared on her face.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>She had a fairy Godmother. The Tardis! And she was much more magical and impressive than the fairy lady from the Cinderella.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Things were looking up, it seemed.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The title of the book read “How to add special features to your sonic devices”.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Now, Rose needed to take the book to the repair facility at the market. And she had to persuade the Doctor to take her to the said market and to get rid of him, too, while she’d do the sniffing around to find the shop to update the sonic.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Oh! Rose’s eyes widened. How would she be able to sneak the screwdriver from Doctor’s all-seeing stare? He saw everything, literally, and had perfect hearing and barely ever slept (honestly, she had never seen him catch forty winks during the time of their adventures together). How on Earth was she supposed to pull that off?</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The Tardis chimed good-naturedly. Rose sensed a wave of calmness wash over her.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>So, it seemed that the Tardis would take care of that, too. Rose smiled and decided to doll up to go and wander around the market (it seemed that the Doctor was not immune to particular items from her closet, and he looked pleased when she tried on some jumpers from the Tardis’ wardrobe – so she might give that trick another shot to incline the Doctor to do what she wants.)</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose opened the doors to the Tardis’ wardrobe and was immediately greeted with a maroon woollen jumper placed neatly on the chair to her left.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Perfect! </span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose was suspiciously quiet these past few days. The Tardis too, for that matter. </span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>No, the blonde wasn’t ignoring him, but she was acting like she wanted seclusion, and not his company, and he worried that he might have been too harsh when he refused to attend the Tyler’s Christmas party. Sure, she’d indulge him anything he asked her for – Rose assisted him while he got tangled in the wires of the Tardis’ engine; accompanied him on his little missions and dutifully prepared his five o’clock tea (the Doctor never asked her to do so, never mind told her it was her obligation to do so, yet she persisted and always brewed the tea just like he loved it, and even sided the beautiful saucers with chocolate digestives he so favoured in this regeneration).</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose would still disappear silently when she thought he didn’t pay attention to her anymore; and he humoured her human quirks. He also knew that some people experienced melancholy, and he thought that Rose, maybe, was one of those people – it was their first Christmas, together, after all.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The object of his thoughts appeared miraculously in the console room. Suddenly, it felt warmer there. The Doctor shook his head at the silly thought: the temperature was the same, it was him who reacted to Rose that way.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>You could hardly blame him, though. She was his favourite girl, after...</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>At that moment, he was shocked by the Tardis with one of the wires he was clutching desperately in his hands. Okay, it seemed that he had two favourite girls now, both very important to him.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose was wearing a maroon woollen jumper with a beautifully cut V-neck. </span>
  <span>Rassilon</span>
  <span>, she was a view. And now, when she’d noticed his intense stare, Rose blushed prettily and nervously put a stray blonde lock behind her ears.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>His eyes followed her every movement. She seemed to be asking him something.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>“Huh?”</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>“I say – how about we hit some alien market, so I could find something for me mum and my mates?” Rose left out Mickey’s name so as not to aggravate the Doctor in case he might refuse.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The Doctor sighed and looked at the Tardis’s controls forlornly. It was not often Rose asked him for shopping, and he acted a little rude towards her invitation, and she really needed a gift for her mum, in the end.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose added hastily “I can go alone, honest </span>
  <span>–</span>
  <span> I see that you’re in the middle of something here.”</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The Doctor grunted inaudibly and prayed that the Tardis would behave once and would land somewhere he actually needed her to land. </span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>She did.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose beamed joyfully at him and promised not to take too long. The Doctor came out of the Tardis’ doors just to make sure that where they landed was safe and where he intended, and let Rose go with a promise to answer her phone if he called and to come back in time for their tea.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>She smiled and stood on her toes to peck him on a stubby cheek.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>And then she was gone.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose couldn’t believe her luck! She was almost giddy with happiness when the Tardis left the sonic on the kitchen table (how the Doctor didn’t notice that his favourite toy was missing she had no idea, but beggars can’t be choosers, so she went along and pocketed the sonic before surprising the Doctor with her jumper).</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>She was extremely pleased that, although he didn’t tell her she looked beautiful, he seemed flustered and generally looked like a fish thrown out of the water. “Beautiful for a human”, uh-huh.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>However, Rose was all but fuming with the steam flowing out of her ears mere forty minutes later. The guys (well, she could call them that, even though they had two heads instead of one, and were built in a humanoid shape, so, yes, she would call them guys) refused to update the sonic because she wouldn’t pay as much as they asked her to. It wasn’t the first time Rose visited the planet, and she knew that they practically wanted to max out the Doctor’s card – although he assured her that she couldn’t do such thing as it was limitless – still, she wasn’t stupid enough to get scammed by a couple (two couples) of idiots.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose wandered about the market, picking some trinkets for her mother and Shareen and Keisha without gusto, and opted for a voucher to the computer games shop from Earth for Mickey that Christmas. A good girlfriend she was, Rose thought of herself scornfully, as she was playing both sides – she dragged poor Mickey along while secretly crushing on the Doctor.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>She shook her head as if it could help her disperse of the unwanted thoughts. It looked like she had to change her career from the shop girl to the watchmaker, or something like that – and Rose desperately needed the help of the Tardis to do that. </span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The Doctor was cursing while walking the path from the kitchen to the console room, looking desperately for his sonic screwdriver. It was not under the grating, it was not on the kitchen table, nor it was on the floor anywhere he’d been before. Just where did his sonic go?</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The Tardis was impassive to his predicament, and showed no sign of noticing his struggle.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Damn!</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose let out a string of obscenities as the sonic refused to work on the wooden drawer that was locked with a key in her room. Don’t get her wrong, she wasn’t snooping where she wasn’t supposed to, she was the one to lock that drawer to experiment with the setting.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>There was just one night left before Christmas, and she was going wild after each failed attempt. Rose wasn’t sure for how long she’d be able to stave off the Doctor from invading her room with burning curiosity to as what she was doing these days – and it didn’t help that he didn’t have his sonic to tinker with. </span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Damn!</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>She puffed the fringe off her forehead and tried following the instructions in the book, again.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>It was the Christmas Eve, and it was time for Rose to visit her mother. Rose smiled blissfully as she put a red plastic bow on the newly-updated sonic screwdriver (it only took five attempts after that one attempt highlighted by the curses) and straightened out her pink sweater and checked the black bow in her ponytail.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>She knew she wasn’t a kid anymore, but she loved bows, and she allowed that weakness to reign over her outfits from time to time. It was Christmas, so she could dress up fancily if she wanted to.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Time to surprise the designated driver!</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>There she was! The Doctor was slowly going mad between Rose’s shady behaviour, the Tardis’ smug silence and the mysterious disappearance of his sonic. He knew he could stop being stubborn and start on constructing another one (not like he hadn’t done that before), but it somehow felt like a betrayal to his trusty old sonic. So, he decided to wait until Christmas to see how Rose would react to the small gift that he prepared for her, and then to try and build a new one.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose walked closer to him, her smile shining like a newly-installed light-bulb, all pretty and pink and with a bow in her hair and...</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Was that?...</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The sonic!</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose grinned enthusiastically and pushed the screwdriver, which was wrapped in a red holographic ribbon with another bow, into his arms.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve tinkered and tinkered, and the Tardis has been a real helper, and now it works on wood! I tried! It really works!” Rose spoke passionately, and she looked so proud and happy and eager to please him. Him! The old rude man who refused to spend this holiday evening with her!</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>He smiled goofily and pulled Rose into a fierce embrace. She squeaked in surprise, but put her hands around his middle and squeezed him with all her might. He laughed happily and let out a loud “Rose Tyler, you are fantastic!” and pushed a clumsily decorated box into her hands. She smiled, surprised that the Doctor thought of her on this “human” holiday, and pulled out a large black T-shirt with a circular symbol on it. They reminded Rose of...</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>“’s your name. In </span>
  <span>Gallifreyan</span>
  <span>, that is. Thought it was time for you to know what it looks like in my language.” Oh, this big burly alien, this old softie, he was worried she wouldn’t like it!</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose hugged him eagerly again. He obliged happily and told her not to thank him before she saw all of the gift. She let out a delighted sound and fished for the remnants of the gift in the box. She pulled out a pretty golden bracelet with pink stones she eyed longingly three weeks prior at one of the markets. </span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Rose felt like she had never smiled more in her life than in those several minutes. She was positively drunk on happiness of the Doctor liking her gift, receiving two marvellous gifts herself and hugging the Doctor twice.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The biggest surprise was yet to arrive.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The Doctor decided to attend Jackie’s party for tea and for tea only. He’d definitely be gone by the time the champagne would be popped open and the gifts would be exchanged.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The excited squeals and elated “thank </span>
  <span>yous</span>
  <span>” filled the night when a pair of time travellers crossed the threshold of the Tardis.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>The Tardis preened and hummed joyfully and went on repairing the damage her Time Lord had made in her engines while missing his sonic.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Merry Christmas, indeed. </span>
  
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>